[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15505]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Jones) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I'm back on the floor again to talk about 
bringing our troops home from Afghanistan.
  I had the privilege and the honor to be at Walter Reed in Bethesda on 
Tuesday, and I talked to so many of our young men and women who have 
lost legs and other parts of their body and just continue to wonder why 
in the world the leadership of the House does not join together and 
call on Mr. Obama to bring our troops home before 2014-2015.
  Mr. Speaker, I'm holding up right now from The Wall Street Journal a 
rather lengthy article that says, ``Afghan Opium Output Surges.'' That 
is real encouraging; our young men and women walking the roads of 
Afghanistan, getting their legs blown off, and yet the drugs in 
Afghanistan are surging. That's great news, I guess, for the dealers.
  Mr. Speaker, in addition to that, on October 5 in a poll, it says one 
in three vets see Iraq-Afghanistan wars as a waste. And I read: ``A new 
opinion survey says one in three U.S. veterans of the post-9/11 
military believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not worth 
fighting. Most of the vets polled by the Pew Research Center also think 
that after 10 years of combat, America should be focusing less on 
foreign affairs and more on its own problems.''
  I'm pleased to see Ms. Woolsey from California on the floor because 
she has joined many of us in the Republican Party and her Democratic 
Party in continuing to grow the opposition to staying in Afghanistan 
until 2014-2015.
  Well, you might say, You keep saying 2014-2015. So I want to make 
reference to testimony of former Defense Secretary Gates. This was on 
February 16, 2011, and it reads: ``By the end of this calendar year, we 
expect there to be less than 100,000 troops to be deployed in both of 
the major post-9/11 combat theatres, virtually all of those forces in 
Afghanistan.
  ``That is why we believe that beginning in fiscal year 2015''--Mr. 
Speaker, I'm going to read that one more time: ``That is why we believe 
that beginning in fiscal year 2015, the United States can, with minimal 
risk, begin reducing Army active-duty end strength by 27,000 and the 
Marine Corps by somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000. These projections 
assume that the number of troops in Afghanistan will be significantly 
reduced by the end of 2014, in accordance with the President's 
strategy. If our assumptions prove incorrect, there's plenty of time to 
adjust the time and schedule of this change.''
  Mr. Speaker, what that means is the end of 2014 becomes 2015; 2015 
becomes 2016.
  I have a poster here that ran in the Greensboro paper in a Sunday 
edition. They had put in their paper a letter from Jim McGovern and me 
calling on the President to bring our troops home before 2014. The 
title says, Mr. Speaker, ``Get Out.'' And the soldiers are bringing a 
flag-draped coffin off a plane.
  I don't know how much longer we have to continue to spend $10 billion 
a month to prop up a crook named Karzai. I just made reference to a 
Wall Street Journal article that opium surges. It's a corrupt country. 
It's never going to change. We might as well just face the fact that we 
won, bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda has been dispersed all over the world, 
and it's time to bring them home.
  Mr. Speaker, with that, I'm going to be handing out to anyone that 
comes to my office a picture of marines carrying a flag-draped coffin, 
and I say call on the leadership all the way to the White House, to the 
House, to the Senate, and ask them to bring our people home.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I will ask God to please bless our men and 
woman in uniform. God, please bless the families of our men and women 
in uniform. God, in Your loving arms, hold the families who have given 
a child dying for freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  And I will close by asking God to please bless the House and Senate. 
I will ask God to give wisdom, strength, and courage to the President. 
And three times I will ask, God please, God please, God please bless 
America.

               [From the Associated Press, Oct. 5, 2011]

           Poll: 1 in 3 Vets Sees Iraq, Afghan Wars as Wastes

       Washington.--A new opinion survey says one in three U.S. 
     veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq 
     and Afghanistan are not worth fighting. Most of the vets 
     polled by the Pew Research Center also think that after 10 
     years of combat America should be focusing less on foreign 
     affairs and more on its own problems.

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